Point of View #1

Unusual Insights into the Picture Gallery

The Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum houses countless works that are rarely exhibited in the permanent galleries or shown in special exhibitions. Behind the scenes, however, the Museum’s curators and conservators continue to make new discoveries about materials and techniques, and to find out more about a painting’s creator, function and importance. From March this year, the results of these multi-facetted studies will be presented several times a year in Room 24 of the Picture Gallery as part of a new exhibition series called “Points of View” that will offer visitors the opportunity to study and get to know the selected artwork(s).

The first of these small shows opens on March 30, 2012; it presents a mysterious 16th century book still-life by an anonymous artist from western Germany or the Low Countries. No less than a dozen additional versions of the composition are known, but art historians disagree about the reason for these repetitions and the painting’s original function.